Punch Shots: Award-winning photo tells a story

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is featuring an exhibit through the end of the year of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs.

Most are borne of war and tragedy, and many are heart-wrenching. Four are from sports — the famous picture from behind of a gaunt Babe Ruth, weeks from death, two Olympic celebrations, and one of the mostly forgotten on-field assault, presumably motivated by race, of football player Johnny Bright.

The exhibit is called Capture The Moment, but in Bright’s case, the sequence of photos by John Robinson and Don Ultang of the Des Moines Register revealed the moment.

Bright was a star African-American football player at Drake University in 1951 when during a game at Oklahoma A&M, he was struck consistently by an opposing defensive tackle. Three times Bright was knocked unconscious, and his jaw was broken; he stayed in the game long enough to throw a 61-yard TD pass.

Bright’s injuries forced him out of the game, and the photos proved how he received them. Oklahoma A&M won the game, and Drake left the Missouri Valley Conference when neither A&M nor the offending player, Wilbanks Smith, was reprimanded.

Bright finished fifth in the 1951 Heisman Trophy voting and was drafted by the Eagles in the first round, but played professionally in Canada. After retirement, he became a school principal and Canadian citizen.

Fifty-four years after the attack, the school, now Oklahoma State, apologized. Unfortunately, Bright wasn’t around to receive it; he died in 1983.